Slab Track Optimization Using Metamodels to Improve Rail Construction Sustainability

Abstract

Railways are an efficient transport mode, but building and maintaining railways tracks has a significant environmental impact in terms of CO2 emissions and use of raw materials. This is particularly true for slab tracks, which require large quantities of concrete. They are also more expensive to build than conventional ballasted tracks, but require less maintenance and have other advantages that make them a good alternative, especially for high-speed lines. In order to contribute to a more sustainable railways, this paper aims to optimise the design of one of the most common slab track typologies: RHEDA 2000. The main objective is to reduce the amount of concrete required to build the slab without compromising its performance and durability. To do so, a Finite Elements (FEM) model of the track has been used, paired with a kriging meta-model to allow analysing multiple options of slab thickness and concrete strength in a timely manner. By means of the kriging, optimal solutions have been obtained and them validate through the FEM model to ensure that predefined mechanical and geometrical constraints are met.Starting from an initial setup with a 30 cm slab made of concrete with a characteristic strength of 40 MPa, an optimised solution has been reached, consisting on a 24 cm slab

CO2-Optimization of Post-Tensioned Concrete Slab-Bridge Decks Using Surrogate Modeling

“…Martínez-Frutos and Martí [ 26 ] use Kriging to solve the robust optimal design of articulated structures, decoupling the processes of uncertainty assessment from the optimization itself. This methodology was also recently applied to other fields such as wind turbine optimization [ 27 ] or railroad slab tracks [ 28 ].…”

Analytic Network Process-Based Sustainability Life Cycle Assessment of Concrete Bridges in Coastal Regions

“…As a result, research has been conducted in recent times in the assessment of infrastructures focusing on their economic, environmental, and social impacts. Although interest has arisen on the sustainability assessment of a wide variety of infrastructure types, such as pavements [2,3], buildings [4][5][6], earth retaining walls [7][8][9], railway tracks [10], dams [11], and others, much consideration has always been given to the sustainable design of bridges in particular.…”